Olivier Driessens

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Olivier Driessens is Assistant Professor in Media Studies in the Department of Communication at the University of Copenhagen. As a media sociologist, he studies the societal and cultural consequences of technological mediation. He has made significant theoretical and empirical contributions on how society and culture are changing in relation to media and communication (mediatisation), celebrity (celebritisation), and data (datafication). His current research focuses on digital and green futures.

 

Driessens is co-editor of ‘Dynamics of Mediatization: Institutional Change and Everyday Transformations in a Digital Age’ (Palgrave, 2017), editorial board member of Celebrity Studies, and the author of articles in leading media & communication and sociology journals such as Communication Theory, Theory and Society, and Communications: European Journal of Communication Research.

 

Prior to joining the University of Copenhagen, Driessens was a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge, an LSE Fellow in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Research and Teaching Assistant at the University of Ghent, where he also obtained his PhD and MA degrees in Communication Sciences. He also holds an MA degree in Sociology (KU Leuven).

 

Primary fields of research

• Societal and cultural changes related to technological mediation: celebritisation, mediatisation, datafication.

 

• Digital and green futures: predictive technologies, the role of the future in present change, technological solutionism, green solutionism, the planetary costs of media, information and communication technologies (including AI)

 

Teaching

Driessens teaches the BA course ‘Reception and use of film and media’ and the MA course ‘Media theory and analysis: Digital media cultures, networks and society’. He supervises BA and MA dissertations and welcomes PhD applicants in the areas of his research expertise.